- Brand new expo ‘New Game Plus’ added to April 2025 festival, showcasing new games, flagship Official Selection line-up and more
- Busy core line-up already confirmed too: including Games Finance Market, Now Play This and the BAFTA Games Awards
- Applications open for the 2025 edition of Ensemble – supporting Black, Asian and underrepresented ethnicities
The 10th anniversary edition of the London Games Festival will be the biggest yet – with the programme of core events announced today plus applications open for game submissions.
London Games Festival 2025 runs from Wednesday 2 April to Sunday 13 April. Headlining the event line-up is New Game Plus, a brand new consumer games expo that will showcase upcoming games from around the world across all platforms – including the 30+ games from the festival’s flagship Official Selection. It will also showcase the 2025 Ensemble exhibition.
New Game Plus takes place on Thursday 3 April and Friday 4 April at the London Museum’s exhibition spaces on London Wall. The event will be open to both the public and professionals, including an industry conference alongside it, with tickets going on sale in December. More details including programming and game line-up will be announced very soon.
A number of other core festival events have been locked in for 2025 as well – including the BAFTA Games Awards, Now Play This, the Games Finance Market, convergence conference Screen Play, plus LGF’s annual Trafalgar Square activities.
London Games Festival is supported by the Mayor of London and is delivered by Games London, an initiative from Film London, the capital’s screen industries agency, and video games trade body Ukie (The Association for UK Interactive Entertainment).
Applications are now open for game and project submissions into the festival’s Official Selection and Games Finance Market programmes. The lobbying process has also started for Ensemble, which every year showcases games talent from Black, Asian and underrepresented ethnicities and acts as a touring exhibition that starts at key LGF events before appearing at other UK sites. All application forms can be found at the LGF festival platform, live at https://festival.games.london.
The games community across the UK will also have the opportunity to add more events to the festival schedule to ensure the widest possible reach of this annual celebration of games; today applications also open for Side Events, a stream of the festival which officially runs from Monday 7 April to Sunday 13 April. The Side Events strand is perfect for third-party partners or smaller community events that want to contribute to the wider LGF audience.
Today marks the last day to enter games for the 2025 BAFTA Games Awards, ahead of the longlist announcement on 20 December, and the nominations announcement on 4 March 2025. More information is available here: https://www.bafta.org/awards/awards-information/games
The full confirmed London Games Festival 2025 schedule so far in chronological order are:
New Game Plus – Thursday 2 April & Friday 3 April. A new expo featuring games across all platforms from around the world.
BAFTA Games Awards – Tuesday 8 April. Celebrating the very best games of the past year and the people who made them.
Games Finance Market – Tuesday 8 April & Wednesday 9 April. Connecting games studios with investors over two days of pre-programmed meetings.
Screen Play – Thursday 10 April. Exploring the creative collaborations and crossover between games and other screen mediums
Now Play This – Thursday 10 April to Sunday 13 April. A festival of experimental game design celebrating London’s most innovative game-makers.
Trafalgar Square Games Festival – LGF’s flagship event in the public realm expects to return to the historic site with free games and outdoor activities at the end of the 2025 festival.
Side Events – Monday 7 April to Sunday 13 April. An accompanying strand of community-organised pop-up and cultural events running at various sites across the city.
The schedule also includes private invite-only events for professionals including an opening night celebration on Wednesday 2 April and the exclusive VIP 100 for global games execs later during the festival.
The in-depth programme promises to make the 2025 London Games Festival, also the event’s 10th anniversary outing, the biggest yet. 2024’s festival edition already solidified London Games Festival’s position as the UK’s biggest games event with over 100,000 people in total taking part. Participation from B2B audiences increased to over 4,100 individual developers, creators, publishers and investors. On-the-ground involvement from international participants represented 41 countries and 900 different global games businesses.